Killing Rabbits
by Agent Malkere
Summary: Every nightmare has its basis in reality and even monsters have to come from somewhere. Oneshot.


_**Killing Rabbits**_

_Agent Malkere _

**Disclaimer: I don't own X-Men Evolution. If I did, then why would I be writing fan fiction for it?**

_A/N: This story idea has been bothering me for months and I finally wrote it down. That's my only excuse._

In the basement, it was always dark. A thin sliver of light filtered through under the door at the top of the stairs and stopped the darkness from being an impenetrable, inky black, but when the light in the kitchen was off it made little difference whether your eyes were opened or closed. Dampness hung in the air, eating into the foundations of the house. The floor was hard, rough cement, wavy and uneven in some areas where it hadn't been poured and spread quite right.

Victor sat on the bottom step of the wooden basement stairs. He leaned his head back against the railing and pulled the moth eaten blanket a little closer around his shoulders. Small tremors wracked his body occasionally like tiny, localized earthquakes. The tips of his fingers felt slightly numb, but that was pretty good considering that outside it was late November. By all rights, he should probably have been a lot colder, but, then again, his body temperature had always run higher than most people's. He just didn't chill easily. Victor closed his eyes, blocking out the dim light from the kitchen, and felt a single, hot tear slide down his cheek.

Had Luke missed him, yet? Surely his friend must be beginning to wonder why Victor hadn't been in school for the past week. Had Luke already come around to the house to see if he was alright, only to be met at the screen door by his mother and told that Victor was sick and couldn't see any one right now? It was too much to hope that his friend might have contacted the police. Luke was too innocent and naïve to think of something like that.

The ten year old sniffed and wiped his nose on the edge of the blanket. The old wool itched his skin and the foul stench of moldy, damp cloth assaulted his senses like a sledge hammer. Victor cringed. The smell of everything seemed to have gotten stronger since… that night. It wasn't just smells that had become more intense. Sounds had gotten louder. The dark had become less dark. It was as though, in this hell hole, the world had become more intensely real.

Victor raised a hand and brushed a lock of dark blond hair out of his face and felt the slight scrape of his nails against his skin. The boy opened his eyes and scowled at his hands in the dim light. His fingernails had become thick and hard and darkened to black. They were growing faster than they should have, too, beginning to curl out over the tips of his fingers like hooked claws or talons. Looking at them made Victor feel sick. They were visual proof that his father was right – he really was unnatural, a freak.

Another tear slipped down his cheek and the ten year old rubbed it roughly away with his sleeve. He turned his attention to the warm bundle of fur sitting calmly in his lap and gently stroked the soft, silky fur between its long ears. Listening to its quick but steady heartbeat was soothing as though the threads of his sanity were held together by the warm fuzzy body. The rabbit was one of two that Victor had saved that summer after their mother had died. He'd found them, huddled up together in the tall grass out behind the house by the creek.

Ever since he was little, Victor had always liked animals and animals had always liked Victor. Actually, he generally liked animals better than people. Luke was his only real human friend. Animals listened better and didn't send so many mixed messages. They were always clear and to the point and sympathetic and understanding. Animals often came to him. Sometimes, it would be a bird landing on his knee when he was sprawled out, half asleep, under the big willow in the back yard. Other times, it would be a stray cat wandering up to him for a quick hello and a rub against his ankles. Victor would talk to them and they'd listen quietly to what he had to say, the look in their eyes telling him that they understood every word he said.

The two brown rabbits, though, they were his best friends. Victor told them everything that happened in his life. He told them about school and Luke and when his father had been drinking too much again and how his mother seemed to do nothing sometimes but yell at him. His mother didn't like animals, hated them in fact. She would not allow pets in the house and had been furious when the rabbits had taken up residence in Victor's room.

Victor fervently wished that the rabbits weren't locked in the basement with him. His father had thrown them in two days ago when Victor had banged to the door begging to be fed. Anything. Anything to fill his empty stomach. His father opened the door a rifle secure in the crook of his arm and the two rabbits held up by the ears in his other hand. He'd aimed the gun right between Victor's eyes as he'd thrown the rabbits down the stairs. His words still rang in Victor's ears.

"_If you're so hungry, why don't you eat the goddamn rabbits!"_

The fall killed one of the rabbits outright, snapped its neck when it hit the hard cement floor. Victor hadn't gone near it once he realized that he could only hear one heartbeat and cried most of the night curled into a ball with the other rabbit as far away from the tiny corpse as he could get. The chill basement air had stopped the small body from beginning to rot. The second rabbit had not escaped the fall unscathed either. It was dying, too. Victor had been able to tell that first night. It was just dying more slowly than the first.

He knew what the only outcome of this could be. He was starving to death and the rabbit was slowly dying. It would probably cling to life for a few more days, maybe a week, but his stomach couldn't wait that long and for some reason he couldn't bring himself to eat the body of the other rabbit in front of the one that was still living. He just couldn't, couldn't even bare to thought of it.

Scooping up the warm bundle of fluff into his arms, Victor walked slowly down the basement stairs, hugging the rabbit to his chest, trying desperately to memorize its heartbeat so that he could keep it tucked away forever in the back of his mind. A sturdy piece of old piping protruded from the wall beneath the stairs in the darkest part of the basement. Tears were streaming down Victor's face now and he didn't even try to stop them. He buried his nose into the rabbit's fur one last time, breathing in its comforting scent, and openly sobbed, his hand stroking the back of its head. After too short a time, he pulled back and mumbled in a choked whisper,

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry." And Victor was suddenly glad of the almost all concealing darkness because it prevented him from seeing the stark fear shining bright in his friend's eyes. Victor raised the rabbit in his hands and, still sobbing, brought its head down hard against the pipe. But not hard enough. The rabbit in his hands, though slightly stunned, still wiggled and squirmed with life. Victor sobbed harder still as he was forced to slam the rabbit's head down on the pipe over and over again. Each blow ripped a scream of agony from his lips as though he were shredding away at his own soul.

Finally, on the eighth strike, there was an ugly, gut wrenching noise like smashing bone china in a leather bag as the rabbit's skull finally shattered and the body lay still in his numb hands. Victor threw back his head and an inhuman wail of despair and misery tore from his throat as he held his friend's dead, broken body. The metallic, coppery scent of blood filled his nostrils as it trickled down his fingers hot and wet and sticky. The heartbeat was gone. He could no longer hear to tender, caring heartbeat in the back of his mind! It was gone! It was gone! It was _gone!!!_ Slowly the inhuman wail of despair began to morph into something angry and raw and feral filled with hate. Hate for the world for refusing to accept him. Hate for his mother never caring. Hate for his father for trapping him in the darkness with his friends and no food. Hate for himself for killing his best friend.

And somewhere deep inside his mind that had once been filled with the gentle, loving heartbeats of animals something snapped in the emptiness. Something broke and the void was filled with something else, dark and ugly and foul and wild. It growled in perverse pleasure, deep and low, at the pungent scent of blood. And at that moment, when the thing growled, the part of the boy that been Victor died forever.


End file.
